1. Technical Field
This document relates to methods and materials involved in reducing viral infection severity and/or treating a viral infection (e.g., a picornavirus infection or a non-picornavirus infection such as a herpesvirus infection) present in a mammal. For example, this document provides methods and materials for reducing the severity of a non-picornavirus viral infection present in a mammal (e.g., a human). In addition, this document provides methods and materials for enhancing innate immunity within a mammal by increasing the expression levels of a set of nucleic acids that encode polypeptides involved in innate immunity.
2. Background Information
Viral infections such as picornavirus infections are a major contributor to world-wide disease. Diseases such as poliomyelitis and hand-foot-and-mouth disease can be fatal to humans and other mammals and animals. Other picornaviruses, such as the rhinovirus, are partly responsible for upper respiratory tract infections.
Picornaviruses perform multiple tasks inside host cells for successful viral replication with very few gene products responsible for these tasks. The single-stranded RNA picornavirus genome has, on average, about 7500 nucleotides and produces a single polyprotein that is cleaved by its own virally encoded proteases. One of these proteins, the RNA-dependent RNA-polymerase, 3Dpol, is required for elongation of positive and negative stranded viral RNA. 3Dpol oligomerizes, which favors elongation and binding to RNA. 3Dpol forms a membranous replication complex with VPg and precursor proteins 3AB and 3CD to initiate VPg uridylylation, which serves as a primer for positive and negative RNA strand replication by 3Dpol.